Wings of the Boy King
by feralhand
Summary: Heaven looks like a fallout bunker. 'Ah, your little hole in the ground,' Lucifer observes patiently, reserving judgment. He can feel Sam Winchester biting into his lip. He can taste the blood. It's not foul or metallic, like it was when Sam was human.


Heaven looks like a fallout bunker.

_Ah, your little hole in the ground_, Lucifer observes patiently, reserving judgment. He can feel Sam Winchester biting into his lip. He can taste the blood. It's not foul or metallic, like it was when Sam was human.

There is a sound like rattling bones. Tessa appears standing at the front door. She arches an eyebrow as if to say _this way_, and the door opens behind her.

Sam's body doesn't move. Sam doesn't let it. "My way, or not at all." These words are a growl. They barely make it through the grit of his teeth. Even then, free and aloud, they don't hit their mark. He fights to keep his arm at his side, but Lucifer pulls it up, opens his palm in front of his face. Sam's eyes go black—it's a reflex he believes he'll never get used to. The light running through his veins is brighter now than it has ever been, but there's no sign of stress in his body. Being in Heaven is making the archangel _stronger_.

_You've lost the upper hand._

Lucifer curls Sam's fingers into a fist and a fighting breath tears out of his nose. His chest tightens around a desperate fear of _losing_, and losing _everything_, and being _less_ than he ever was when he was just a Kansas boy with his heart set on saving the world. In the split second of panic he allows himself, Sam hears his own voice ringing _Oh, God_, in his head. Satan sneers, offended.

_Are you ready to see what I do with it?_

No. No, Sam isn't ready, _clearly_ he isn't ready and maybe he was never ready but _Oh, God_, if he can't succeed here—

His fingers uncurl. His hand relaxes. His arm slacks and falls to his side. Lucifer lets go of the metaphorical wheel.

On the day the world didn't end, when Sam overpowered Lucifer and the angel's light retreated into the back of his mind, he'd felt relief. It's not relief, now. His labored breathing shudders and slows as the fight is over, but he hasn't won this time. Lucifer slips away into the dark recesses of his mind and Sam feels as if he has lost his grip on the head of a snake. _The_ snake. His mind whirls, waiting for a bite that never comes.

He can already feel the venom burning in the ashes of his soul.

It doesn't matter who, in the end, takes the next step. Whether they move alone or together, there is only one path to take. That is the tragedy and the sickness and the sensation of tears rolling down his face. It's hard to fight the devil when you're playing for the same team.

* * *

Castiel has _never_ been more certain that humans are wretched.

For all the ages he spent watching them, awed by their ingenuity and spirit, he feels twofold foolish now. He feels the weight of his bones like lead. His shoulders ache and his wrists burn and a sensation of pins and needles dances in his bound hands. He is powerless, and he can only watch as Abaddon hoists Dean up in shackles beside him.

Castiel has never _felt_ more wretchedly human.

If he were an angel, still—no, as an angel, he'd ruined everything. If he were a fallen angel, at least—no, he would be bound by Lucifer's spell, like Abaddon. Even as he longs to be something else, he hurts in a place he'd like to think is his soul. He would like to have a soul, especially if he is going to die a human death.

Then again, human souls go to Heaven, and really, that's the last place any of the Winchesters wants to be.

Adam is still screaming Dean's name. "Wake the FUCK up! Open your eyes! FIGHT IT!" No amount of roaring will wake him from an angel induced blackout, but Adam keeps trying. Maybe he thinks that since it was his fingers that touched Dean's forehead, he can rouse him, too. More likely, he's just desperate, he's just bleeding, he's just trapped in a circle of holy fire, he's just shaking uncontrollably because his left arm is burned through to the muscle and words, words, any words at all are just falling out of his mouth.

They stop being words, they start being sounds. Noises. Sticky yelps and ribbons of howls. Adam doubles over and straightens his one good hand, stiff as a board and trembling, as if in prayer. "Michael. Michael, please. Michael!"

Angel radio continues to be a stinging reminder of everything Castiel lost. He hears Michael's reply in a strangled whisper. The archangel is an ember rapidly cooling in Adam's body. _There is nothing left._

Abaddon's incorporeal wingtip slides under Castiel's jaw. Her new feathers cut like piano wire. She opens his skin just enough to let his blood trickle, and then her lips close over the wound and suck hard. Castiel's body wracks and it only worsens the agony in his joints as he hangs from the ceiling. He manages to endure noiselessly.

* * *

"There," Ash tells Sam, pointing into the laptop screen. "That's where the bastard's holed up." As if on cue, the lights in Heaven's Harvelle's Roadhouse flicker and extinguish. Even Ash's specially rigged angel radar system goes down. "Son of a— He pulled the plug!" He's already got his fingers in the circuitry, trying to magic a fix.

"And that's all the time we've got," Bobby says, already off his bar stool and heading for the exit. He shoots Sam a look when he takes too long to get going.

Sam hits the door at a run. "So we've got a ballpark."

"Yeah, and how much good is that gonna do us in Heaven?" Jo gripes as she struggles to keep up with Sam's ridiculously huge stride. "A ballpark could be Tom, Dick, or Harry's 'eternal Tuesday afternoon'. We need a bead on him. Coordinates. Something!"

Ash guides them through the back door to another Heaven. The lights, so to speak, are still on in this one. He starts marking down walls with sigils as soon as their motley group finishes battening down the hatches.

"Alright, look," Pamela says, and she's wearing that same look she wore when she died. If it weren't so inappropriate, she'd consider this a _devil may care_ smile. "If it's our only shot, we gotta take it. Sam, you can fly, right?"

Sam visibly flinches. Inside, he's reeling and Lucifer is chuckling. Sam can't get a grip on how _insane_ it is when he sputters, "yeah."

"'Kay, take us up, captain." She puts her arm out and Bobby steps between her and Sam.

Ellen is the one that opens her mouth first, though. "Are you nuts? We don't just throw each other to the wolves. Let Ash get his equipment running again."

"And then _Tron_ shuts us out of the divine engine, or whatever, again, and we're right back to square one. He's hoofin' it, and so should we." Pamela casts a hard look at Sam, imploring him to see her way is the only real hope they have left. She really only has to convince him—it's not like anyone else could hold them back. "I just gotta get close and I'll be able to sense him."

"It's a one in a million chance we can even get close going at it blind," Sam tells her, and he's just as brokenhearted about refusing her as she is about hearing it. "I'm not risking your soul for this, Pamela. I'm sorry."

A lull falls over them, cold and suffocating. Even Lucifer is without words. Sam has a hard time buying _that_ one, and before he can stop himself, he's glancing inwardly at his dark passenger. _I must be doing something right_, Sam thinks at the angel.

_You are_, Lucifer replies, and a chill runs down Sam's spine. He doesn't _want_ the devil to agree with him, and he is repulsed by the hint of encouragement in Lucifer's tone.

Lucifer's silence hadn't been hopeless, it had been pensive. _You always have. I think that's our answer._

"Sam?" Bobby's squeezing Sam's shoulder, beckoning him out of his own head. "You still there?"

It dawns on Sam slowly. His expression hangs in a shape between dumbstruck and rapture. He grabs Bobby's arm and shakes the old man by his shoulders. "That's it, that's how we find Metatron!" Sam wheels around, elated and wanting to see the faces of those he's come to call family as they realize they can _win_.

But they're confused. They weren't privy to the _conversation_ with _Satan_ in his _head_. It hits him, then, how separate, how alone he really is. This is how it'll always be. He's the _freak_, even in the afterlife.

"We..." he begins, his voice not as steady as he wants it to be, "we ask the souls for help. The people that died so we could learn, so we could save others. The ones that survived and lived on until their number was up. The ones that Crowley put in the ground before I—" His voice squelches, his throat closes on the thought—_before I cured him, before I became... this_—unwilling to _ever_ let those words face the light of day.

He feels Lucifer. He feels the presence of the archangel under his skin, locking his trial-corrupted soul into the body it wanted to flee long ago. In a sigh, Lucifer reminds him that little Sammy Winchester closed Hell, he _succeeded_ in closing Hell, and Lucifer _let_ him, _helped_ him. _Look at what we've done together. Look at what I've let go, for you._

_You don't get to call me Sammy._

Sam shoves Lucifer's sentiment aside, swallows, and starts again, "the ones that were taken from us too soon." Sam feels Bobby's hands fall away from his arms. "Every hunter, every Man of Letters, everyone we wanted to protect. We can build a dragnet. We can find Metatron _together_."

* * *

Dean breathes smoke and feels fire in his head. For a second, he thinks he's dead. He thinks he's in Hell, locked in with the demons. _Sam_...

With rapid clarity, he realizes he is wrong. The pain brings him back to a reality he's not willing to accept. He's fighting his chains before he's even opened his eyes. He knows where he is, he knows he's hanging in that goddamn barn, and he knows the heat on his face comes from the flames of the holy fire than damn near killed Adam. He doesn't know Cas is there, not until he gets a glimpse of the man hanging limp and lifeless next to him. Dean wants to find solace in Cas's death. He wants to believe Cas is far away from mortal suffering, even if it means he's just been hurled onto another battlefield or, possibly, into oblivion.

But Castiel rouses to the clanking of the chains and Dean's heart drops into the pit of his stomach. Dean's voice is hoarse and tired when he speaks. "Hey, dumbass."

Cas lifts his head, stares over the cuts on his cheeks and under the soot on his brow. He looks as though he's been put through the ringer, and Dean feels it like he's wearing the injuries on his own body.

"The ends of the Earth, Dean." He's repeating it. Dean won't pull up the memory Cas is referencing right now. Not here. It wouldn't be right. "I can fight it. I have." _That_ memory is harder for Dean to suppress, and without trying he can see in his mind the night that Castiel nearly killed him on Naomi's command.

Dean shakes his head. Maybe he doesn't believe or doesn't trust or something easy like that. Maybe it could be more than just _no, please_, but it's not. It's really not. "You just can't do what I tell you, can you? Not even when I ask _nice_."

Cas just stares, careful and apologetic.

Then, Adam clears his throat.

Dean starts. He lifts his chin, trying to see over or through the roiling fire in the center of the old barn. He can barely make out the top of Adam's head. He must be sitting in the dirt.

"Hate to kill the moment," Adam is saying, and the wear and tear of the past days—or years—are audible in his voice. He sounds much older than he should be. "But Michael could _just_ hold his own toe-to-toe against Satan. You really think you've got a chance at resisting when he gets in your head?"

"Yes," Cas answers without deliberation.

"Dean's right, you are a dumbass."

"Then I suggest you start praying." The barn doors are sliding open. Cas doesn't have to look to know who it is. "If you're going to forsake the Winchesters, you'd better find God."

"Don't worry your pretty little head," Abaddon chimes in, flexing her fingers over the flames. Her pale skin is wet, blood splattered. Apparently her scouting turned up some trouble. Now that she is back to guard duty, she doesn't look tense. "I know God. He responds better to Lucifer, though. He'll be back down here soon."

The barn door swings closed behind her, bangs in its frame, and fails to stick. It creaks and creeps back open.

Abaddon sidles up to Castiel, wraps her arms around his bruised neck. Her fingers are ice, like the clutches of death itself. "We could still get hitched, brother," she hisses, making a mockery of a vow older than this moment and a lie older than that. Her lips graze his and he shuts his eyes against the threat of a kiss.

Dean lets out a thick cough. "I think I might hurl." Abaddon pauses, turns her head. He considers it a victory and doesn't let his eyes cross the room to the door. When Abaddon peels herself off of Cas, Cas looks. His expression is unreadable and unhelpful.

Abaddon looks Dean up and down, then she cocks her head wistfully. "Would you die if I took out your tongue _very_ gently?" She stares, studies, wide-eyed and wildly curious. Dean stares right back. He uses this moment as an opportunity to try to figure out how she could have ever fooled Cas into believing she was human. It probably wasn't that complicated since she lacked a demon face. Friggin' fallen angels.

"Do not touch him," Adam commands. No, it's Michael. It's hard to tell them apart. Where one starts and the other ends has been so blurred by time in The Cage, but the light guttering in his eyes reveals the truth. "Or I will cross this fire and kill you before I am dead."

Once again, Abaddon's attention turns. She smiles, appreciating Michael's warning, for only a couple of seconds and then it's gone. Her face hardens, her eyes drawn to the ajar door. Without further word, she moves toward the exit and to the locks.

Dean glances at Cas, his mouth slack and his eyebrows high, asking a question he won't put in words. _Is it Sam?_

Cas shakes his head.

Abaddon screeches.

Dean, Castiel, and Adam turn at once and watch as Abaddon dissolves into a fine mist. As the air clears, Jesse stands there, staring into the barn and appearing ever anxious.

"What the hell, man?" Dean barks, wincing in his bindings. "Do you guys even _hear it_ when I say _get lost_, or does it always sound like _come back tomorrow_ to you?"

Jesse blips five feet in front of Dean. "You're welcome," he says, trying to smile. His slender fingers slide over the ropes and suddenly Dean is falling in the dirt on his knees. Rescue hurts more than it should.

"Dean is right," Michael says, and Dean has to do a double take. "Your being here is a mistake, cambion. Leave."

Jesse raises his hand, cutting Castiel's ropes and extinguishing the holy fire at the same time. Cas falls on his face with a grunt, and suddenly everyone in the barn save one, rather out-of-place looking sixteen year old boy, is on the ground. "You're welcome," he tells the archangel, and his tone is a little bit firmer than it was the first time.

Michael is unmoved. "You will kill us all if you remain here."

"No," Jesse says with the kind of certainty that only comes by honest means. "I won't." And then he holds up a satchel of consecrated sand and grins.

* * *

Sam is staggered by the sheer number of them. Thousands. Tens of thousands. More. All of these souls were granted some measure of peace by the work of hunters and scholars and good people. Some were there for Bobby, for Rufus, for Ellen and Jo, for Henry Winchester and his forefathers. Some were there for Gordon Walker, when he had been a good man, and the mess of other hunters and do-gooders out there in the world. And some were there for Dean, and for Sam himself.

_Legacy?_ Lucifer asks as the thought crosses Sam's mind. _I suppose if you wanted to leave a mark on the world, you succeeded in doing that. But this mark looks like a stain to me._

Sam just smiles. _This_. He is a part of _this_. He may have lost his humanity, he may have lost control of his body and his mind, but he lost it for _this_. It's worth it. How could he have ever thought he was alone? He knows in this moment that he is not alone. He will _never_ be alone.

Their crack team spreads the secrets of sigils and traversing Heaven, and so it goes like wildfire. The abstract points on Ash's screen become a sea of light swirling right in front of them. Humanity is a tidal wave crashing down over the elysian fields, and Sam half-wishes Chuck was around to see it and capture the sight in the pages of the gospel.

_Sam_, Lucifer bids softly, and Sam neglects to consider the archangel's tone as having anything to do with Chuck.

Sam puts his arm around Bobby and hugs him. "Best case scenario?" Bobby asks at the last possible moment, because otherwise he never could've asked at all.

"I dunno," Sam sighs, and he's trying to put on a brave face. "Maybe," he muses, "Michael makes an exception?"

Bobby just squeezes Sam's shoulders, and they pretend that this isn't goodbye. They can't know for sure, can they?

Sam lets go. Lucifer opens his wings. Sam isn't oblivious to the feeling. It still makes his head spin the way the universe bends around his feathers. Flying is like that moment after you dive into the water and you don't know which way is up or down. You're suspended and weightless in a place where you don't know if you'll ever hit the bottom or touch the surface. Your stomach is still jumping from the fall and your skin still burns from the impact. You're not sure if you're going to sink or swim, gasp or drown, but this moment _right here_ is perfect. Somehow, it's become one of Sam's favorite things.

It reminds him of _being alive_. It's like sitting in the passenger's seat of the Impala as Dean pushes her past 110 miles per hour. It's a hunt where they burn out of ammo and they bleed but they save the family in the end. It's the heartache of hitting a dog, and the heartache of meeting a beautiful girl.

There is still so much he wants to do. He sees it all in the current of Heaven and the spin of the Earth.

But.

If it really ends here—right here—Sam could say he'd had a pretty good run.

Lucifer sets them down in the eye of the whirlpool of souls. They stand in the middle of a short-grass field bordered by gentle rivers.

_I recognize this place_, Lucifer comments, and he sounds lost in thought. Sam instantly knows dread like he's never known it before. _This... this is where He planted Eden. This is where it started._ Sam turns, searching the green but unremarkable field for something, _anything_. Lucifer is twisting inside of Sam's body, writhing like a worm on a hook. Sam almost enjoys the idea of Lucifer in pain, but the angel's misery is leaking into his brain and clouding his thoughts. For some reason Sam can't puzzle out, a memory glides to the front of his mind. In it, he's standing with his brother in Heaven, in Sam's first home away from Dean and John.

Sam shakes his head to clear it. There is no one else in this field. "He's not here—"

And then white hot fire rips through Sam's side. He buckles inside himself and Lucifer surges forward to pick up the slack in his body. Lucifer twists and grabs hold of the angel blade embedded in Sam's ribcage. He snarls in Metatron's face.

But it's not Metatron's face at all. Lucifer is staring at Gabriel, resurrected; and this Gabriel is not the same as his dear brother. The reins Metatron has on him are practically visible, drawn like the gold strings of fate across his grace.

Sam's eyes go black at the sight of the true form of an archangel. Lucifer wraps his wings around his vessel, folds his grace around Sam's burned soul and tells him not to look.

Sam is screaming in agony, but he manages to choke out a crying plea of _don't kill him!_ It burns, _he_ burns in Gabriel's presence and it feels like he's melting into nothing but black smoke, and all Sam can think of is this guy—strange as it is to think of Gabriel as_ some guy_—telling him his greatest pain was watching his family turn on each other.

Lucifer regards Sam's memories with a mask of practiced indifference. _I will try not to_, is all he offers. Then, Lucifer digs his hands into Gabriel and slings him across Heaven.

Sam's side oozes. His bones crunch like shattered glass beneath his skin. Lucifer flexes his revitalized grace and starts to knit his vessel back together, but he's interrupted halfway through by a familiar voice.

"I know how this story ends," Metatron says. "So do you. Do I really have to spell it out for you?"

Metatron is holding something in his hand. Sam can barely see. _A... pen_, Lucifer explains, calling it by the closest word he can. There's an old adage playing on a loop in the back of Sam's mind about which is mightier. Lucifer unsheathes Michael's angel blade and holds it up to the light. _Don't worry_, Lucifer tells Sam. _I'll cut it off_.

They fly forward, and Lucifer isn't as quick as he thinks. They hit a wall that isn't there, like the invisible boundary of a devil's trap, and suddenly Sam's body is snapped backwards into a river. Sam is blindsided and completely unprepared. Lucifer, on the other hand, is seething, and he bursts from the water and boils the rivers dry. He bends Heaven the way he bent Hell, and he doesn't stop until the field is yellow and dead and the sky is empty and grey.

They're hit from behind again by Gabriel. The collision blows them over the field and burns long furrows in the dirt. Gabriel lands at Sam's head, hoists his blade, and heaves it down. Lucifer rolls at just the right moment, twists his vessel, and plunges Michael's blade into Gabriel's light. Gabriel rings at an eardrum bursting decibel and tears off into the sky.

Metatron is carving a sigil in the air. It burns on nothing, and Sam can't discern the mark's meaning or purpose, he just knows he's never seen one like it before. Lucifer pulls at him. The archangel's movements feel feeble, less coordinated, and for a moment Sam fears he'll lose the angel in his corner. He realizes less than a second later that it's not the sigil Lucifer is fighting, it's Sam's own broken body. Lucifer mends only what he has to—he needs just one good arm and _fast!_ As soon as the bones click into place, Lucifer winds back Michael's blade and throws it.

The point of the weapon embeds itself in the center of the sigil. Sparks snap, destructive energy arcs off the blade and onto the astonished Metatron, and then the field explodes.

It's at this point a human would lose consciousness. Sam doesn't. This kind of damaging force doesn't even register as pain when it touches his body. It's so far beyond that. He's only aware of when it's over, because it's like breaking a chokehold and sucking in the first clean breath he's had in centuries. Maybe that was one of Lucifer's thoughts. Sam thinks it works just as well.

Lucifer stands over Metatron's crumpled body wearing no expression. There are things he could say on behalf of Heaven, of the Host, of God, of his birthright. He doesn't waste the energy. Lucifer drives Michael's blade through Metatron without one word, and the scribe dies.

Heaven is still. The rim of the storm of souls peeks over the sky.

Lucifer carefully lifts a glowing, glass vial from Metatron's burnt out form.

_Anything you desire to say, Sam?_

The souls begin to disperse. It feels like a sun shower.

"I..." Sam realizes he's speaking out loud. His body is his, and it's whole and healed and he's standing in Heaven. He's also playing escort to an archangel, and he's still the demon the trials made of him.

_We saved Heaven, you and I._

Sam can't think of any response befitting to this event. All of the words he knows are small and colorless and thin compared to this.

_And we can do so much more._

That, Sam thinks, doesn't fit either. As a matter of fact, it sounds ominous. It sounds—

And Lucifer drops them through Heaven, to Earth.

* * *

The barn is a smoking crater. Abaddon is dead, Lucifer can feel it.

_Abaddon?!_ Sam yells, squaring off with Lucifer's essence inside his body. _I locked them away_, he growls. _You said they were all gone_.

Lucifer shrugs a shoulder, lets the loss roll off him.

Sam's body turns but not of his own volition. He can't even blink his own eyelids, and Sam can't understand why Lucifer is so strong now.

Michael lands in the road. Adam's arm remains a mangled, charred thing, and this informs the way his body staggers. Sam can't get his head around it. Michael's batteries are dead and Lucifer is completely—

"Is it done?" Michael asks, leaving the reason for the state of the barn a mystery for another time. "Return to me my blade if it is so."

Lucifer presents Michael's blade. He holds up the vial of grace that belongs to Castiel, too.

Michael takes back his sword with the flick of two fingers. The blade disappears. Adam's eyes seem to peer through Lucifer. "Sam Winchester?"

Sam gasps for air, claws for a grip. He wants to scream. _You don't understand, something isn't right here!_ Lucifer's grace tightens around him like the coils of a great serpent.

"He is resting now."

_You're lying?! HE'S LYING, MICHAEL! Jesse!_ The kid was no where to be seen, but maybe— _Can you hear me!? Anybody?! God damn it, STOP THIS! We were in this together, Lucifer! We saved Heaven!_

_Yes. We did._

"Where is Castiel?" Lucifer asks. "And Dean, where is he?"

Sam roars in his own head, he digs his claws into his own body and tears with all his strength and all that's left of him. Lucifer pushes his fingernails into the palms of Sam's hands, but otherwise he is unfazed.

"Waiting," Michael answers. Sam can't believe he just buys Lucifer's act. Anger and darkness has plagued Sam for years, but _this_ feeling is a new, pure rage. "I'll return our brother's grace to him." Michael holds out his hand.

Lucifer tilts his head. "You won't eat it, will you, dear brother?" Adam's face changes to suit Michael's chary thoughts, and Sam's fingers close around the vial. "Because it looks to me like you're in dire straits yourself."

_He wouldn't do that_, Sam snaps.

"I'll be alright once I return to Heaven. I assure you, my main concern is the Host and our family." Adam's fingers flatten, his palm opens wider for emphasis. "Lucifer. Give it to me."

"I think I'd feel better handing it to Castiel myself." Inwardly, Lucifer stares Sam down.

Michael grits his teeth. "No."

_Stop_, Sam demands, but he can hardly think. Was it possible—could Michael really betray them? His own brother? Wait. No. That's not right.

"Then, we are at an impasse. How should we settle this, brother? I wouldn't consider it fair to fight you as you are now."

Michael's breaking heart is in his eyes like tears, but angels don't weep. He steps back. He closes his hand, drops it to his side. His fingers snag on his pants' pocket.

"_Is he giving up?_ Is that what I'm supposed to be thinking, Michael? Have you soaked the blacktop in holy oil? Is that your plan, to kill me? Is that why Dean Winchester and Castiel aren't present for this exchange?—because they would never agree to throw Sam on a pyre."

Adam's body stands stock still on the center line in the road.

_It's me, isn't it_, Sam speaks to the dark. _This true vessel bullshit. That's why you're standing and Michael is limping. … It's because I'm a demon_. It's cathartic, just saying the word in his head. He loses nothing in admitting the truth. He gains a surreal sense of power from it instead. He understands that this is the obstacle that keeps him from overpowering Lucifer, and he starts to think of a way to work around it.

It's a train of thought that's swiftly derailed.

Lucifer unfolds his wings. They fly. In the next instant, Sam's fingers are closing around Adam's neck. Sam wants to be sick. He wants to die. He'd take both of these bastards with him if given the chance. Another chance, really.

Michael grabs hold of Lucifer for all the good it does. There's a blade at Sam's throat, and around Adam's wrist, a newly forged and empty grace vial flashes in the afternoon sun. Lucifer sees this and his lips curl in a grimace. A moment later, Adam's body lands in the gravel on the shoulder, bleeding light. Michael presses his one good arm against the wound in his chest.

"I don't want to hurt you," Lucifer says as if it makes up for it after the fact.

The wind picks up and the sound of wings blows by them. "Well," says the newcomer, and Lucifer turns his chin to his shoulder to look. It's Gabriel, again, in his old vessel now. He's different. He's... free. "Probably wanna _not_ kick him to the curb, then." Gabriel leans to see past Lucifer and peers at Michael. He seems equally apprehensive about both of his brothers, but at the same time he's glad to see neither of them are dead. "Heya, Mikey."

"Sam?" It's Dean.

Gabriel has brought Dean and Cas. Sam's eyes go black and he hates himself for it. His brother and his friend look so small, so fragile, so distant in their humanness.

"No," Lucifer answers, and Gabriel apparently doesn't like the sound of that because he draws his sword. Sam's hand moves at his side and a look of guarded confusion slithers across Lucifer's expression. The vial of Castiel's grace is gone.

Sam coughs out a grinning gasp in his own head. This is why Lucifer wouldn't turn over the vial to Michael? _You… you thought you were going to use Cas?_

_Every rebel needs a cause_, Lucifer fires back, like he's defending his choices. The _devil_ is defending himself to_ Sam Winchester_. Sam is floored.

_You really don't have a clue, do you?_ Sam laughs, and he's all fangs and smoke and fire, and he doesn't care because _this_ is beautiful. _I hate to break it to you, man_—and Lucifer responds with contempt at the word choice—_but Cas wouldn't go to bat for you even if you personally shoved that bottle down his throat. He'd fight you, and he'd never stop fighting you. You wanna know why? Family, Lucifer. It's not about who made you or whose blood is in you or who you can manipulate by saying 'this is how it's always been'. It's who you love. You think humans are flawed? So are you. Your fatal flaw is that you only love yourself._

Lucifer's light turns away and Sam is plunged into a warm, reclusive darkness. Lucifer narrows his eyes, unwinds his hands, and faces Gabriel. "Don't make me kill you again."

Michael slings the new vial over the road. Gabriel catches it easy. "Try me," Gabe taunts, and he smirks, and his wings stand behind him burning with the light of all the souls of Heaven.

Sam's gripped by a terrible awe. He's never felt such joy in the face of death. He _knows_ death will take him if Lucifer leaves him, but he feels no woe. He feels _humbled_ that those souls are rising up to fight the devil, that _good people_ could and _would_ walk the same path he had and fear no evil. He's honored that the people that had been saved were willing to turn back and save him, too.

Cas has his hand on Dean's shoulder, and Dean isn't moving. It's like he already knows. Sam's not sure if Dean understands, but he hopes—he really hopes he does.

This is it.

Gabriel shoots forward like a star. Lucifer blocks the blade that comes at him with Sam's hand, except a demon hand doesn't work too well at stopping an angel blade. Instead, Sam's arm comes apart at the seams.

It happens too fast for Sam to feel anything. Gabriel's hands are in him, around Lucifer, in an instant. Sam's back is on the pavement suddenly, and he feels lighter. He feels like he could float away.

Gabriel wrenches Lucifer from his vessel and the hands upon hands of humanity hold the devil at bay. Grace and form and all that is Lucifer goes into an innocuous glass vial. It's done.

The sky swirls like a blue-green galaxy as the souls return to Heaven.

Dean and Cas untuck their heads from their arms at about the same time. Dean is on his knees beside Sam a heartbeat later. "Sammy?" he whispers at him, and he doesn't expect a reply. Not when Sam's body looks as bad as it does.

But Sam's still there. A little bit. His voice is a shaky murmur on the back of his tongue. It takes him a few tries, but he eventually gets out what he's trying to say. "Bobby ... says hey."

"Is there nothing you can do?" Cas tries to keep his volume down, but right now a dropped pin would have sounded like thunder.

Gabriel presses his mouth into a line. He says it that simply: no, angels cannot heal demons.

They don't have eight hours to cure him. They don't have eight minutes.

"T-Tessa," Sam sputters. Dean visibly braces himself. His eyes dare to move off his little brother for a second, like he has any hope of seeing the reaper.

"No," is all Dean can say. He refuses. He'll hold onto Sam and no reaper will be able to take him.

That's not how this story ends.

"Castiel," Michael calls. He's struggling to push Adam's body off the ground. Gabriel flies to his aid, hiding his fear of being smote rather well. Michael's vessel is healed in the blink of an eye. Gabriel wobbles on his feet afterwards, feeling the absence of his brothers and sisters and the distance of Heaven.

Cas approaches with more caution. He feels a strange sense of being disingenuous, standing next to his brothers in all their divine glory. He worries Michael is going to ask him to do something he can't do.

Michael holds out the vial of Castiel's grace. He managed to wrest it from Lucifer after all, in those few seconds when he'd had a hand on him.

"Thank you," Cas says, accepting the vial with a meek nod. He stares at the churning light as it presses against its glass container. There's something magnetic about it, something that pulls it to him with an intensity that matches the longing he has felt for it. Funny, how easily he can look away from it now.

Dean is wiping the blood off Sam's face. He really has eyes for nothing else. If he focuses on this, he won't come apart.

In the time it takes for Castiel's gaze to move from Dean and Sam back to Michael and Gabriel, he's already made up his mind. Neither archangel seems surprised.

The road is warm under Cas's hand. He kneels and touches Dean's arm to get his attention. When he speaks, though, it's for Sam. "Would you consent to one more insane plan?"

The corners of Sam's mouth twitch in the spirit of a smile.

Dean eyes the vial and utters, an edge of incredulity cutting into his tone, "_that's_ your plan?" But he's mostly just breathless and still so easily taken aback by Castiel's selflessness. Ah, well, Cas was a Winchester now. It was kind of part of the job description.

Cas pales. "Well, it's more like an idea. _Any idea is better than none_." He's repeating this, too. Dean thinks Cas is closer to a parrot than a human, and he rolls his reddened eyes. "But you'll need to back away. There's no telling—"

"Nope."

Arguing with Dean would be useless.

It is truly a sorry state in which they find themselves. Either way you slice it, Dean is being told he has to let go, and he won't. He never will. Cas admires that, even now.

"Humans," Gabriel tsks as he crouches next to Cas.

Michael nods gravely as he kneels beside Dean.

The archangels lay their hands over Castiel's, over his bottled grace; and they fold their wings around all of them, to protect them.

And Dean lays his hand across Sam's heart to protect him.

The world lights up.


End file.
